Slides used in the talk delivered by Ganes Kesari B, at IIIT R&D Showcase event, in Hyderabad on 18th Feb 2017.

1. NEW AGE TOOLS
IN
DATA JOURNALISM
B GANES KESARI
CO-FOUNDER, HEAD – DESIGN & ANALYTICS GRAMENER

2. JOURNALISM HAS HAD SOME CONVENTIONAL SILOS…
2
Content
Technology
Design
Data
..BUT, THEY HAVE STARTED TO CRUMBLE NOW

3. WHY DATA JOURNALISM?“ Journalists need to be
data-savvy.
It used to be that you
would get stories by
chatting to people in
bars…
But now it's also going to
be about poring over data
and equipping yourself
with the tools to analyze it
and picking out what's
interesting.”
- Tim Berners-Lee

4. “Data journalism is [...] the
convergence of a number of fields [...] -
from investigative research and statistics
to design and programming.”
- Paul Bradshaw
Visual Design
Inv. Research Programming
Statistics

5. “Data driven journalism is a workflow
that consists of… digging deep into data
by scraping, cleansing and structuring it,
filtering by mining for specific
information, visualizing it and making a
story.”
Mirko Lorenz
Source
your Data
Identify
insights
Present
Visually
Weave a
Data
Story

6. KEY CHALLENGES
• Data literacy
• Tech tools adoption
• Discovery & re-use
• Re-architecting the
newsroom
• Evolving consumers
• Mobile first
• Rethink monetization
• Disaggregation of
content
Internal Industry

7. DIGITAL STRATEGIES ARE EVOLVING..
THE NY TIMES STRATEGY
“The New York Times is
now as much a
technology company as a
journalism company”
Bill Keller
Executive editor
THE CNN STRATEGY
While the New York Times keeps
track with today's technological
disruption by turning partly into a
technology company themselves,
CNN tries a slightly different
approach: close collaboration.

8. BUCKING THE TREND
• Others focused on cost. We
increased newsroom size
• As stories were growing shorter,
our stories grew in length
• Despite all advice, we erected a
digital paywall
There are very few companies
with the luxury of focusing on
serious journalism today.
Mark Thompson
CEO, The New York Times

9. BUZZFEED: BUILDING
THE NEXT MEDIA GIANT
• Build original, viral content
• Native Advertising
• Blend content & advertising
seamlessly
“A creative idea plus a fresh network
is the best way to go from zero to
millions”.
Jonah Peretti
CEO, BuzzFeed

10. SHOW
me what is happening
with the data
EXPLAIN
to me why it’s
happening
Allow me to
EXPLORE
and figure it out
Just
EXPOSE
the data to me
Low effort High effort
High effort
Low effort
Creator
Consumer
THERE ARE MANY WAYS TO AID CONSUMPTION THROUGH
DATA JOURNALISM

11. 11
PRINT
Pic Source: Flickr/goodwines (https://www.flickr.com/photos/goodwines/5181402251)

12. SHOW
me what is happening
with the data
EXPLAIN
to me why it’s
happening
Allow me to
EXPLORE
and figure it out
Just
EXPOSE
the data to me
Low effort High effort
High effort
Low effort
Creator
Consumer
THERE ARE MANY WAYS TO AID DATA CONSUMPTION

13. EDUCATION
PREDICTING MARKS
What determines a child’s marks?
Do girls score better than boys?
Does the choice of subject matter?
Does the medium of instruction matter?
Does community or religion matter?
Does their birthday matter?
Does the first letter of their name matter?

14. Based on the results of the 20 lakh
students taking the Class XII exams
at Tamil Nadu over the last 3 years,
it appears that the month you were
born in can make a difference of as
much as 120 marks out of 1,200.
June borns
score the lowest
The marks shoot
up for Aug borns
… and peaks for
Sep-borns
120 marks out of
1200 explainable
by month of birth
An identical pattern was observed in 2009 and 2010…
… and across districts, gender, subjects, and class X & XII.
“It’s simply that in Canada the eligibility
cutoff for age-class hockey is January 1. A
boy who turns ten on January 2, then,
could be playing alongside someone who
doesn’t turn ten until the end of the year—
and at that age, in preadolescence, a
twelve-month gap in age represents an
enormous difference in physical maturity.”
-- Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers

15. 0
5,000
10,000
15,000
20,000
25,000
30,000
35,000
40,000
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90 95 100
TN CLASS X: ENGLISH

16. TN CLASS X: SOCIAL SCIENCE
0
5,000
10,000
15,000
20,000
25,000
30,000
35,000
40,000
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90 95 100

17. TN CLASS X: MATHEMATICS
0
5,000
10,000
15,000
20,000
25,000
30,000
35,000
40,000
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90 95 100

18. ICSE 2013 CLASS XII: TOTAL MARKS

19. LET’S LOOK AT 15 YEARS OF US BIRTH DATA
This is a dataset (1975 – 1990) that has
been around for several years, and has
been studied extensively. Yet, a
visualization can reveal patterns that
are neither obvious nor well known.
For example,
• Are birthdays uniformly distributed?
• Do doctors or parents exercise the C-section option to move dates?
• Is there any day of the month that has unusually high or low births?
• Are there any months with relatively high or low births?
Very high births in September.
But this is fairly well known.
Most conceptions happen during
the winter holiday season
Relatively few births during the
Christmas and Thanksgiving
holidays, as well as New Year and
Independence Day.
Most people prefer not
to have children on the
13th of any month, given
that it’s an unlucky day
Some special days like April
Fool’s day are avoided, but
Valentine’s Day is quite
popular
More births Fewer births … on average, for each day of the year (from 1975 to 1990)

20. THE PATTERN IN INDIA IS QUITE DIFFERENT
This is a birth date dataset that’s
obtained from school admission data
for over 10 million children. When we
compare this with births in the US, we
see none of the same patterns.
For example,
• Is there an aversion to the 13th or is there a local cultural nuance?
• Are holidays avoided for births?
• Which months have a higher propensity for births, and why?
• Are there any patterns not found in the US data?
Very few children are born in the
month of August, and thereafter.
Most births are concentrated in
the first half of the year
We see a large number of
children born on the 5th, 10th,
15th, 20th and 25th of each month
– that is, round numbered dates
Such round numbered patterns a
typical indication of fraud. Here,
birthdates are brought forward
to aid early school admission
More births Fewer births … on average, for each day of the year (from 2007 to 2013)

21. THIS ADVERSELY IMPACTS CHILDREN’S MARKS
It’s a well established fact that older
children tend to do better at school in
most activities. Since many children
have had their birth dates brought
forward, these younger children suffer.
The average marks of children “born” on the 1st, 5th, 10th, 15th etc. of the
month tend to score lower marks.
• Are holidays avoided for births?
• Which months have a higher propensity for births, and why?
• Are there any patterns not found in the US data?
Higher marks Lower marks … on average, for children born on a given day of the year (from 2007 to 2013)
Children “born” on round numbered days score lower marks on average,
due to a higher proportion of younger children

22. Wealth of Candidates
22

23. http://times.gramener.com/candidates/

24. RS 1 LAKH

25. RS 10 LAKHS

26. RS 1 CRORE

27. RS 10 CRORES

28. RS 100 CRORE

29. RS 1,000 CRORES

30. RS 10,000 CRORES

31. HOW RICH ARE THE CANDIDATES?
31

32. HOW RICH ARE THE CANDIDATES?
32

33. MLA Attendance Statistics
33

34. < 50
< 75
< 95
< 100
= 100
MLA attendance at the Assembly
Karnataka, 2008-2012

35. <
50
< 75
<
95
< 100
= 100
JD(S)
IND
IN
C
BJ
P
PARTY
LEGENDS
Attendance percentage of MLA’s
Attendance
%

36. 36
TV
Pic Source: Flickr/FaceMePLS (https://www.flickr.com/photos/faceme/1457252072/)

37. SHOW
me what is happening
with the data
EXPLAIN
to me why it’s
happening
Allow me to
EXPLORE
and figure it out
Just
EXPOSE
the data to me
Low effort High effort
High effort
Low effort
Creator
Consumer
THERE ARE MANY WAYS TO AID DATA CONSUMPTION

38. “Exploring politics as Data stories..”

40. Has there ever been an
all-woman election?
Who’s the oldest
candidate ever?
Who won by the lowest
margins ever in history?
Was there ever an
uncontested win?
Som Marandi (BJP) and Konathala
Ramakrishna (INC) won by just 9
votes in Bihar, 1998 and AP, 1989
respectively.
Since 1989, no election was won
uncontested. Srinagar, J&K was the
last, where Mohammad Shafi Bhat
of JKN won without competition.
Only two elections had women
candidates exclusively: Karur, TN
(1967) and Panskura, WB (1977).
Only 8 had a woman majority ever.
Arif Ahmed Shaikh Jafhar (NBNP)
contested the 2009 elections from
Dhhule, MH at age 99, making him
the oldest candidate ever in India.

41. Which party has the largest
number of victories in Lok Sabha
elections?
41

42. https://gramener.com/election/parliament 42

43. What’s the largest number of
candidates that stood in an
election?
43

44. https://gramener.com/election/cartogram?ST_NAME=Tamil%20Nadu

45. LIVE RESULTS
Our CNN-IBN Microsoft
Election Analytics Canter,
which you can see at
www.bing.com/elections or
election-results.ibnlive.in.com,
served over 10 million
requests on 16th May 2014
— the day of India election
results.
This is one of the largest
real-time visualisations that
we (and perhaps many
others) have attempted
45

46. 46

47. https://gramener.com/timesnow/
TIMES NOW COVERAGE HAD
80%+ VIEWERSHIP

48. 48
DIGITAL
Pic Source: Flickr/ThomasHawk (https://www.flickr.com/photos/thomashawk/192567803/)

49. SHOW
me what is happening
with the data
EXPLAIN
to me why it’s
happening
Allow me to
EXPLORE
and figure it out
Just
EXPOSE
the data to me
Low effort High effort
High effort
Low effort
Creator
Consumer
THERE ARE MANY WAYS TO AID DATA CONSUMPTION

50. We have internal
information. Getting
information from outside is
our challenge. There’s no
way of doing that.
– Senior Editor
Leading Media Company
“

51. INDIA’S RELIGIONS

52. AUSTRALIA’S RELIGIONS

54. UTTERLY, BUTTERLY, COLOURFUL
54

56. The Network Layout of each sonnet shows how Shakespeare
wove together words to build a sonnet. Each circle is a word
and the lines show the direction (or link) to the next word.
SHAKESPEARE’S SONNETS
The colour of the circle is an approximate indication of
the Part of Speech!). The sonnet currently selected - Sonnet
7 is most textually similar to Sonnet 67 (25.40 %).
56

57. “Which is the least successful party
in Indian elections history?”

58. WHICH IS THE LEAST SUCCESSFUL PARTY?
https://gramener.com/election/parliament#story.ddp

59. PADMA AWARDS: DASHBOARDS WITHOUT DATA
59

60. 60
<Change pic>
https://youtu.be/e3hssOzuwGc

61. Sudar, Yahoo!
Anand C, Consultant
Kiran, Hasgeek
Anand S, Gramener
Mugunth, Steinlogic
Honcheng, buUuk
Sau Sheong, HP Labs
Lim Chee Aung
Bangalore
Singapore
1 follower
100 followers
A follows B (or)
B follows A
Most followed in
Bangalore
Most followed in
Singapore
EXPORING THE SOCIAL NETWORK OF CODERS

62. Tata Teleservices
Tata Consultancy Services
Tata Business Support Services
Tata Global Beverages
Tata Infotech (merged)
Tata Toyo Radiator
Honeywell Automation India
Tata Communications
A G C Networks
Tata Technologies
Tata Projects
Tata Power
Tata Finance
Idea Cellular
Tata Motors
Tata Sons
Tata Steel
Tayo Rolls
Tata Securities
Tata Coffee
Tata Investment Corp
A J Engineer
H H Malgham
H K Sethna
Keshub Mahindra
Ravi Kant
Russi Mody
Sujit Gupta
A S Bam
Amal Ganguli
D B Engineer
D N Ghosh
M N Bhagwat
N N Kampani
U M Rao
B Muthuraman
Ishaat Hussain
J J Irani
N A Palkhivala
N A Soonawala
R Gopalakrishnan
Ratan Tata
S Ramadorai
S Ramakrishnan
DIRECTORSHIPS AT THE TATAS
Every person who was a Director at the Tata
Group is shown here as an orange circle. The size of
the circle is based on the number of directorship
positions held over their lifetime.
Every company in the Tata Group is
shown here as a blue circle. The size of the
circle is based on the number of directors the
company has had over time.
Every directorship relation is shown
by a line. If a person has held a
directorship position at a company, the two
are connected by a line.
The group appears to be divided into
two clusters based on the network of
directorship roles.
Prominent leaders
bridge the groups
Second group of companies
First group of companie
Some directors are
mainly associated with
the first group of
companies
Some directors are
mainly associated with
the second group of
companies

63. 63
The Boundaries across different
Media are Blurring

64. 64
..and Newer Genres are
Emerging

65. VISUALISATION IS IMPERATIVE FOR
DATA → INSIGHTS → ACTION
Spot the unusual Communicate patterns Simplify decisions

66. We handle terabyte-size data via non-traditional analytics and visualise it in real-time.
Gramener visualises
your data
Gramener transforms your data into concise dashboards
that make your business problem & solution visually obvious.
We help you find insights quickly, based on cognitive research,
and our visualisations guide you towards actionable decisions.
A D A T A S C I E N C E C O M P A N Y
GANES KESARI B
ganes.kesari@gramener.com
twitter.com/@kesaritweets